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The date 2025 might sound more futuristic. Perhaps it's the sound of the consonant "f" in "five". However 2026 represents one step beyond, a moment where we currently stand, with each futuristic development – primarily the widespread adoption of AI – seeming dystopian, or perhaps even worse. (It often seems like in a true dystopia, the mind-dulling corporate-sponsored dehumanizing technology would actually operate more effectively?) Didn't anyone warn us about this?

The answer, at least concerning science fiction films from years ago (or occasionally recently) positioned in 2026, is both yes and no. Some of those warnings are broadly applicable (global catastrophe) but specifically far-fetched (if humanity is inevitably decimated, we will almost certainly take the primate species with us). Some of them are visionary; others just resemble poor visual effects. But it's valuable to explore where various film-makers, ranging from masters to journeymen, believed we'd be situated by this time in the world's development. So let's take a look a selection of the movies that have been depicted in 2026 throughout cinematic history and determine if they contain any lessons to teach us.

The Game 'Doom'

Now, this doesn't bode well. According to the game-to-film translation *Doom*, whose two-decade milestone was recently celebrated by hardly anyone, 2026 is the year that mankind discovers a portal to an long-lost metropolis on Mars, where the inhabitants of Earth can establish a scientific outpost. Now, the bad stuff – regarding plot and in terms of garish cinematic imitations of a first-person-shooter video game – does not actually go down for two more decades in the future, so even if we find a Martian gateway now, we might have a respite to avert true disaster. Were we to uncover a passageway to an ancient Martian city, it's truly hard to tell whether a certain tech billionaire would remain extremely excited to send everyone to Mars or would instantly become disheartened that the portal was not a thing he funded himself, allowing him to claim savior-like credit for humanity's journey into the stars. This precedes we consider the collection of extraterrestrial genetics and subsequent mutations into monstrous beings. (Once more, this is closer to 2046, distinct from the Wong Kar-wai film.) Overall, *Doom* is (at the very least) a useful example for why, exactly we let Mars become a stretch-goal hope for humanity. Whether in the director's cheap-looking space-western *Ghosts of Mars*, the realistic sci-fi of *Red Planet*, or the woo-woo spiritualism of *Mission to Mars*, our far-off planet rarely act as a beacon of hope. If anyone wants to make that dubious red-planet real estate sale, perhaps they ought to begin with at least making the fantasy version appear appealing.

The Marvel Dregs

One of the strangest features of the present MCU is how to account for the various global cataclysms, encompassing a half-decade leap whose events are largely undepicted in the films themselves; the movies have turned into a clock radio constantly running a few minutes fast – except with minutes, it's years. So there's a whole bunch of Marvel stuff that various wikis clarify to be set in 2026. The better entries, like *Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3* and the underrated romp *The Marvels*, occur far away from Earth, and so feel pretty unmoored from our sense of time. However the poorer material is among the weakest Marvel has created: the convoluted and aimless TV show *Secret Invasion* and the remote-meeting debacle of *Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania*. Judging by these examples, we're facing a whole lot of frustrating stagnation in 2026, including the related narrative that in truth, this nonsensical crap happening in front of us is essential to future events. Even worse, in the real world that assertion will probably prove accurate.

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Most of the classic five-movie *Planet of the Apes* series is located in the more distant tomorrow of Earth, but the modern series that began with 2011’s *Rise of the Planet of the Apes* starts closer to home, initiating its chronology around 2016. So by the time a virus that knocks out the majority of Earth’s human population has run its course, and also enhanced the cognitive abilities of primates, it’s merely 2026, with additional setbacks for mankind (and victories for apes) to come. The end-credits sequence of *Rise*, depicting how rapidly this virus propagates globally and set in 2019, appears profoundly unsettling in the wake of the real-world global health crisis that would dawn in 2020. By comparison, the movie *Dawn* looks less literal; astonishingly, we’re already six years out from the spread of Covid-19, and society, though clearly impacted by the ongoing virus, was not wiped out, and our technology certainly hasn't been disabled. But this most pessimistic of the four contemporary *Apes* movies (at least so far!) nonetheless contains a substantial downer to offer, suggesting that the fundamental nature of beings, whatever qualifies as each, will inevitably result in warfare, regardless of the work of the best-intentioned individuals. We’re at the mercy of those who exploit others’ baser impulses, although those instincts are not held by the most. Currently, it seems hard to argue with that, even though we ought to try.

The Silent Classic

Easily the most prominent depiction of 2026 in cinema is from a movie nearing marking its 100th anniversary. The director's silent classic *Metropolis* is set in a city of tomorrow where rich businessmen preside over the skyscrapers as laborers work tirelessly below the surface on the machines that power the city. Rich city-dweller Freder, son of the city’s master, has his perspective changed to these enormous social gaps when he falls for Maria, an subterranean organizer who preaches a reconciliation of the separate strata of Metropolis. A scientist with darker plans creates a automaton in her image, hoping to tear the entire Metropolis down in flames. Here, a machine designed to mimic a human does not serve as an instrument of the ruling corporate class, but someone who desires to witness their downfall; it's one element flipped by the modern world in a vision of tomorrow that in other ways seems to be progressing. *Metropolis* also imagines a world where advanced machinery depends on traditional manual labor, which appears as a most logical union of conservative contempt for “unskilled workers” and corporate enthusiasm for an AI bubble. It has not yet materialized, but it's simple to picture a slightly less stylish-looking version of Lang’s city expanding out with the prospect of a return to industrial production. The trickier, less plausible feat is the conclusion of the film, where the gap between the wealthy and the have-nots is spanned with love; rather than with concrete reforms. Like *Dawn of the Planet of the Apes*, the movie pleads for peaceful cohabitation; in contrast to *Dawn*, it appears hopeful about the chance